The Burden of a Heart
by soul vacation
Summary: No one ever warns you that loving is as much a burden as it is a balm. Prompt supplied by a friend.


In his pocket, his mobile phone began to chime. Glancing to his left, at the unfinished stack of paperwork held obligingly in place by an attractive paperweight, Mycroft allowed himself one long moment to simply breathe. A deep inhale, held hostage in his chest while he closed his eyes and counted to five, and then a steady release. His fingers tapped a rhythm against the smooth polish of his desk, three beats and a pause and two more, and it made his mouth quirk up a bit at the corner, but he couldn't recall the song. Ah, well - he had more pressing things on his mind than an elusive tone. Always, unfortunately.

Heels clicked their way down the hall, muted and muffled by the door between them, but he didn't hear them so much as he trusted in their presence. Anthea was steady, constant; much like himself, though there were some of his acquaintance who would be loathe to admit it. While it was true that there were times his life bordered on the truly frenetic, for the most part, he had cultivated a schedule and a manner so impenetrable that nothing really ever caught him off guard. Oh, there was the occasional unanticipated bombing with catastrophic consequences, and perhaps once or twice he had to stretch his influence over a ballot box, but these instances were so few and far between when compared with all of the _near incidents_ that he could almost write them off entirely.

Well. Almost. He couldn't be negligent, after all, so of course he treated each tiny slip as a learning experience, but the truth of the matter was that Mycroft Holmes had a very steep learning curve. He rarely made mistakes, and when he did, he only made them once.

He stretched his legs out beneath his desk, his chair protesting the motion as he did. The thankless life of the British government - all stiff joints, late nights, the barest snatches of sleep and oh, yes, food that was bad for you. It was so difficult to maintain a proper diet when one slept in two hours stretches and ran oneself ragged the rest of the time. Anthea was excellent at arranging meals for him when she wasn't otherwise occupied, but he considered it... insulting, for lack of a better word, to expect as much from her.

Consequently, he didn't always eat his best. As it stood, he felt a familiar gnawing in the base of his stomach, and he sighed, glancing bad-temperedly at the bottom right drawer in his desk. Should he indulge..?

He placed his mobile on the desk, face-up, and read the alarm message. _Sleep in one hour_. A helpful notice when he found himself in the midst of a meeting, as it gave him time to wrap up the matter at hand and prepare himself for a two hour nap. Polyphasic sleep, while generally excellent for his schedule, did sometimes irritate him; it made having any semblance of a personal life nigh impossible. Not that Mycroft generally bothered himself with such matters, however...

Giving in to temptation, he leaned over and slid the drawer open noiselessly. He took several careful moments to select the proper lolly, unwrapping it delicately. Cherry. He slid it back and forth in his mouth, rolling the bulb over his tongue, and then resignedly gave in to temptation of a different sort.

It took him only a few moments to conjure up the appropriate channel, which ought to have warned him off the task at hand. It was a gross abuse of his position and influence that he did this at all, and while Mycroft had never minded bending the rules to suit his purposes (how could he, with the position he held?) there was a fine line between "the greater good" and "because he has a nice arse."

He sighed, reaching up to massage the bridge of his nose with two fingers. Three camera screens came into view, one far more grainy than the other two, and he settled back into his chair with minimal guilt. He had a bit of an obligation to keep up on the gentleman in question, given his proximity with Sherlock, but if one couldn't be honest in one's own head...

No, it had been quite some time since Mycroft had looked at Gregory Lestrade purely from the angles of "usefulness to my brother" and "level of threat to my brother." After the initial discussion (and he refused to refer to them as kidnappings, because honestly, the dramatics implied) his hopes had not been remarkably high. While a decent sort of man, he wasn't the kind who made the best of first impressions. Middle-aged, divorced, far more married to his work than Sherlock could ever profess to be; paternal despite having no children, inhibited in his work by his compassion and fondness for those he worked with. He really would never progress past the rank of Detective Inspector, and that was a little sad, but no more than he deserved. Still, Mycroft had kept an eye on him, citing his closeness to his errant little brother, and he had slowly accumulated enough knowledge to realize that first impressions could be very, very deceptive.

Oh, the facts remained the same. He was no less middle-aged and divorced now than he had been when Mycroft had first taken a passing interest in him, but of course every man was more than simply the sum of his statistical data. Unfortunately, this was something that Sherlock had not realized yet, and Mycroft directly attributed his fascination with John Watson to his inability to properly catalog the indistinct parts of the man. Personality, Sherlock did not seem to understand, was not a fixed measure; it changed and grew along with a person, under a constant battery of stimuli and ever-changing environments. Frankly, it was why Sherlock would never survive in politics, which was all to the better.

Grimacing as he thought of it, he tapped a few keys, adjusting the camera's zoom. Sherlock in the government. Lord preserve them all.

Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately?) Mycroft was not burdened with a similar misunderstanding of human nature. Quite the contrary; he saw things, many more things than oftentimes he would have liked, but he could not be so irresponsible as to ignore them. Such was the reason that he approved of John Watson as a companion for his brother, such was the reason that he trusted Anthea implicitly; such was the reason that he found himself... enthralled, for lack of a better word, by Gregory.

Was it presumptuous of him to refer to the man as Gregory, even inside his own head? They _had_ only met once and were the furthest thing from friends that he could imagine - ah, yes, another person who regarded him skeptically - but Mycroft had spent enough time in observation of the man that he felt rather close to him. Insufferably creepish, he knew, but with as little time as he had for social calls, it really was as close as he could get to any sort of meaningful connection with another human being that wasn't on his payroll.

And it said something, didn't it, that he didn't have a connection at _all_ with Gregory. Well.

Propping his chin up on his hand, he allowed his eyes to drift to half-mast, watching the detective mill about his office. Case must be bothering him, as they were wont to do; the man took an incredible burden upon his shoulders, which Mycroft had initially found foolish. He had neither the skills nor the resources to tackle all of the cases that he so dutifully labored over, and taking personal responsibility for the failed ones, the unsolved murders, the criminals they couldn't catch again until they'd already claimed more lives? Foolish. The only fast track the man was putting himself on was one to burn-out, rendering the collapse of his marriage and his utter devotion to his (sparse) paying job completely worthless. It was a bit sad, and he recalled pitying him, near the beginning. Pitying him, and also being a bit relieved; here was a man who would give up his personal life and his prospects to remain just where he was, and so he was the perfect shepherd for Sherlock.

Unkind of him, but of the many things Mycroft Holmes had been accused of in his time, kind was _rarely_ mentioned.

He watched Gregory pace the length of his office, hands alternating between his hips and his short-cropped, silvering hair. Mycroft had never found silver particularly attractive, on a man or a woman; there was a dignity implied there, he supposed, but overall he tended to see people's features as merely one facet of their entire look. Silver hair generally came with age lines, stooped shoulders, and flagging musculature; time was a harsh mistress, and he'd met only a handful of individuals who could do so with dignity. Objectively, he could see why Gregory embodied the exception to this particular scenario, though it made him no more comfortable with the notion.

No, indeed. How a man was supposed to feel comfortable when he found himself admiring the sturdy sweep of another man's shoulders, the strong set of his jaw, and the confident, near arrogant sway of his hips when he walked was beyond Mycroft.

And so very few things were beyond him.

Perhaps, as he was constantly telling Sherlock, they truly _did_ have more in common than either of them would like to admit. John fascinated Sherlock because he was unpredictable to a point; not dangerously so, not erratic in his behavior or reckless in a way that would endanger Sherlock, but emotionally. He stayed, when no one else had, and he reveled in the volatile atmosphere that clung to Sherlock like a second skin. They thrived with one another, fed from one another, in a relationship that Mycroft would _almost_ have worried about had he not been completely confident in the integrity of John Watson's character. Frankly, they were alarmingly well suited, and it pleased Mycroft only a little bit more than it annoyed him.

He wasn't proud of the annoyance by any means. He zoomed again, as Gregory had paused by his window, a hand placed lightly on the hip cocked to the side. He truly did find him attractive, despite how absolutely ordinary a man he otherwise was - and ah, there was the similarity. The mystery of the attraction despite all odds, the deviance from his usual _type, _as though he had the time or the desire to maintain a steady enough string of lovers to accomplish establishing a type.

But no, he wasn't proud of the annoyance, nor the sliver of jealousy that threaded its way into his thoughts when he was nearing his nap time (thirty-seven minutes until, he ought to begin to get ready for bed) but he was mature enough to handle both. Handle, not ignore, as Sherlock so often did.

Would it make him a terrible person to admit that he was holding his breath, waiting for the moment where Sherlock realized that John was not only vital to his business but to his _heart? _No, likely not, not if it was filtered through the view of the concerned and ever-caring older brother, but when one considered the absolute disconnect Sherlock presently had from proper emotions, and how startled he would be by it...

Well, Mycroft was bound to be a _little_ amused. He was vaguely amused thinking about it just now; that was surely why he was smiling. It had nothing to do with Gregory throwing his hands up after sampling undoubtedly ice cold coffee, face screwed into an endearing mixture of alarm and disgust.

Well, perhaps a bit.

His mobile sounded the alarm again and he sighed, offering it a bleak look. "Yes, I am well aware."

He subdued the wretched noise far more quickly than he rid himself of the compromised security footage. If this was the only time he could justify a bit of laziness to a personal end, well, he might as well enjoy it while it lasted.

Unaware of his audience, Gregory slumped over his desk, cradling his head in his hands and going still. Mycroft knew, both from repeated observation as well as the time of night, that it was only a matter of time until the detective gave in to his weariness and fell asleep at his desk once again.

Voice amused, almost fond, he reached out to tap the screen of his laptop. "Oh, Gregory. You'll wake with a crick in your neck again."

Clucking his tongue, he cut off his feed from the Yard's security cameras, rising with a weariness that betrayed his age. A brief shower and then bed, for two short hours, and then it was back to the general happenings of his life once again, much as he knew it would be for the Detective Inspector when he jolted himself awake from an inopportune nap.

For no real reason at all, he hummed on his way to the shower.


End file.
